In the News (Tue 31 Mar 15)

Drills with a percussive action (such as hammer drills, jackhammers or pneumatic drills) are usually used in hard materials such as masonry or rock.

A drill press (also known as pedestal drill, pillar drill or bench drill) is a fixed style of drill, which may be mounted on a stand or bolted to the floor or workbench.

Mill drills are a lighter alternative to a milling machine, they combine a drill press (belt driven) with the x y co-ordinate abilities of the milling machines table and a locking collet that ensures that the cutting tool will not fall from the spindle when lateral forces are experienced against the bit.

The hand drill is considered by some to be a more difficult process than the bowdrill - it is advisable that anyone wishing to learn this technique also fully acquaints themselves with the BowDrill first.

Like the bowdrill, the hand drill relies on a spindle and a hearth, but there is no extra equipment used (except in other Variations).

As with the bowdrill, some care should be taken to ensure that your hearth and spindle are dry woods, with no green or damp parts which will hinder the generation of a coal.

While it may not be quite as reliable as the bow and drill method, with which more people are familiar, it is still quite effective in the hands of a proficient individual.

This drilling action, a combination of speed and downward pressure, creates great friction at the interface of the two woods and causes the drill and/or hearth materials to burn and slowly crumble into a charred powder.

A wooden drill is spun in the socket of a hearth board while pressure is applied to increase friction.

As the hands slip down the drill and reach the hearth board, they are quickly removed from the drill and raised back to the top to continue the process.

The Thong Drill utilises the same principle as the bowdrill, except a cord or thong is wrapped around the spindle and pulled back and forth with two hands.

www.bushcraftwiki.com /wiki/Fire_drill (585 words)

Dictionary definition of DRILL(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-01)

Drill is used adjectively, or as the first part of a compound; as, drill barrow or drill-barrow; drill husbandry; drill plow or drill-plow.

Drill plow, or Drill plough, a sort plow for sowing grain in drills.

Drill sergeant, a noncommissioned officer whose office it is to instruct soldiers as to their duties, and to train them to military exercises and evolutions.

www.dictionarybarn.com /DRILL.php (482 words)

Fire by Friction(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-01)

Later the bowdrill method evolved and is based on the same friction principles has the hand drill, but uses the body and muscles in a more efficient manner than the hand drill.

The bowdrill, as its name implies, requires a short (2'-3') slightly flexible and bent dead stick for the bow, and a length of durable rope, leather thong or plant cordage (shoe strings or simple cordage work in a pinch).

The bowdrill method is very similar to the hand drill, but utilizes the short bow and string to turn the spindle rather than the hands.

For example, a convenient size for a hand drill spindle is the diameter of your little finger and length from outstretched fingertips to elbow.

A common size for bowdrill spindles is the diameter of your thumb and the length from the tips of your fingers to the base of the palm.

This means that the pressure between the drill and the fireboard increases as you drill, because pressure equals force (i.e., downward force on the drill) per unit area (i.e., the area within the burn hole).

The bowdrill once mastered is much simpler and enables you to use a wide variety of timbers.

Have the bow string facing your leg with the bowwood horizontal and away from your leg, the rope pointing in a straight line along the hearth board, otherwise the drill will keep jumping out of the hearth board bowel that forms or break out the side of your board.

Place the bottom end of the drill in the hollow, angled slightly back towards you so that it is located by the uncut top half of your hearth board and the hollow in the bottom half.

You will need a bow, with a thong long enough to loop around the dry stick that is to serve as a drill, you will need a socket with which to hold the drill against a hollow in the fire board.

The bow string from a shoe lace to a twisted length of rawhide etc. is tied at both ends so as to leave enough slack to allow its being twisted once around the drill.

When the drill is smoking freely & that you have the Punk grinding out easily so that the V cut is full of it, put extra pressure on the socket at the same time give 20 to 30 faster strokes with the bow.

Your hands work their way down the drill and you have to quickly move them back to the top and re commence drilling before too much heat is lost.

The bowdrill once mastered is much simpler and enables you to use a wide variety of timbers.

Have the bow string facing your leg with the bowwood horizontal and away from your leg, the rope pointing in a straight line along the hearth board, otherwise the drill will keep jumping out of the hearth board bowel that forms or break out the side of your board.

These have included the hand drill, bowdrill, pump drill, fire plow, pyrites and chert, and even some unusual methods such as the bamboo fire saw, fire thong, and the fire piston, which makes use of compressed air to produce fire.

Ishi spoke of his hand drill as being male (drill) and female (fireboard) with the mating of the two producing life (fire).

Like the bowdrill, hand drills need to be made from a relatively soft hardwood or a soft "wood" from various usable weeds.

The bow string should always be horizontal to the ground (if the ground is perfectly flat) and perpendicular to the drill.

This requires fewer materials than the drill method and takes less dexterity (which would be good when your hands are very cold), but it requires more raw strength and a lot of coordination to stop each stroke at exactly the right spot to avoid blowing away your hot dust pile.

I couldn't make a fire with my bow and drill for beans until it occurred to me that I needed to get that string more "tackyed" and when this idea occurred to me, I tackey my hide string up with beeswax and had a fire going in no time.

I do this because making fire with a bow & drill is hard as all hell and while there may have been many experts at doing this in days gone by, there are few, if any, today, and if there are some today, I'm not one of them.

Instead, the bearing stone is either held in one's mouth and the drill is drilled between the palms of one's hands.